


The Life and Adventures of Pedro, the Neighborhood’s Very Tired Babysitter (And His Young Charges)

by IShipThem



Category: Sister Claire (Webcomic)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-16
Updated: 2015-10-16
Packaged: 2018-04-26 14:00:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5007439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IShipThem/pseuds/IShipThem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I blame blazedrgn for this. Entirely. This is what happens when you make me think about cute babies in the livewrite chat, Blaze!</p><p>Have some self-indulgent Modern!AU in which Pedro is neighbors with Maman and Catharine, Oscar, Jackson and Olga get in lots of trouble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Life and Adventures of Pedro, the Neighborhood’s Very Tired Babysitter (And His Young Charges)

At half past five, when the sun is tinting the kitchen walls’ orange, there’s a knock at the door.

But to be honest, it’s not really a knock; sounds more like someone is politely _kicking_  it. Maman raises one eyebrow. She’s had her share of people doing rude things to her house – throwing eggs and destroying flowers, spray-painting her front door with cruel words – but polite kicking is definitely new. 

She looks over at Zora. “Do you think I should prepare my frying pan?” she says.

Zora smiles, her lips pressed around the rim of her tea cup, eyebrows wriggling. “I assumed you kept it by the door.”

Maman scoffs. “Now, then. And how would I fry my eggs and feed the bottomless pit that my daughter calls a stomach?”

She leaves Zora laughing by the kitchen table and walks up to the front door. It leads to the kitchen anyway, in an astonishing feature of bad architecture, so it takes her but five steps. The old heavy key unlocks it with a grumpy dawdling. She pulls it open.

Pedro is standing on the other side, already as tall as her, his face the very picture of resignation. Maman blinks at him, surprised. Not by his presence, but due to the fact he’s covered in mud. His hair is completely plastered. She wouldn’t have expected that from him! Hadn’t he outgrown those kind of games some eight years ago?

Pedro takes a deep breath. “Hello, Maman,” he says. “Hello, Miss Zora.”

He makes a pause as if the words are physically painful. And then, in the tone of voice of a man that’s just too done with this world: “I found your children trying to leap to certain death at the river bank.” A pause. “Again.”

Maman looks down. There, hanging each around the waist from one of his arms, are Catharine and Little Jackson, looking like two mud monsters, feet hovering above the floor and slowly dripping in her welcome carpet. They shoot her twin smiles of mischief. Maman has a sudden urge to burst out laughing.

The look Pedro has on his face is the only thing stopping her. He settles them down with a thump. “Here they are,” he says. “Mostly in one piece.”

Because she’s trying too hard not to laugh, Zora’s the one who makes the question: “‘Mostly?’” she says.

Still looking like he can’t believe this is his life, Pedro raises a strand of Catharine’s hair. It’s a ruined mess, a huge chunk of it missing and ending in jagged edges. “It got caught,” Pedro says. “I had to amputate it.”

Catharine self-consciously smooths it back. Oscar and Olga, who’d been so far hiding behind Pedro’s legs, peek from around him. They both seem equally devastated by the loss of Catharine’s hair. A drip of mud falls from Pedro’s chin. “Please,” he says, still staring at Maman. “Can’t they just try and not have any near-death experiences when I’m around? Can’t they? Is that asking too much? Can’t they  _not_  be dying just  _for once_  when I come back from work?”

Maman opens her mouth to answer, but Little Jackson beats her to the punch. “Oh, we weren’t  _dying,”_ she tells him. “Cat and I had it totally under control.”

Pedro turns to look at her very,  _very_  slowly. “You,” he says, “were running after five kids  _twice your size_ brandishing a  _bicycle_   _tire.”_

From behind Sabine, Zora has a sudden and very suspicious cough fit. Little Jackson shrugs. The frills at the straps of her overalls drip with mud. “They were making fun of Oscar,” she says sternly. Catharine nods.

“They needed to be punished,” she tells Maman, her small face extremely somber. Pedro stares at Jackson some more, his face still frozen in disbelief.

“A bicycle.  _Tire.”_ He repeats, as if she hasn’t heard him right, and when Little Jackson just shrugs again, he looks like he’s about to sit down right there and then.  _“You were running down the river bank with a rusty bicycle tire!”_

His voice shrills to hypersonic levels. Olga and Oscar share an embarrassed look, their cheeks and ears and necks very pink. Little Jackson throws her hands up. “And we would’ve  _gotten_ them if you hadn’t gone all scrambled eggs on us!”

Pedro stabs a finger at her and looks up at Maman. “See?” he says. “ _See?_ See what this child is saying?”

Sabine figures it’s time to intervene. “Thankfully no one got hurt,” she tells Pedro, reaching for his hand. “I’m sure it was thanks to you, Pedro. You have my gratitude.” Patting his fingers, she offers: “Do you think it might help calm your nerves to have a nice, long hot bath?”

Pedro opens his mouth. Closes it. Sabine can see the conflict in his face, for she knows he hasn’t had hot water at home for the best part of ten years. She also knows he nearly falls over himself every time the girls so much as prickle a finger. Poor young man! Sabine hopes he’s calmer if he ever has a baby of his own.

 “I…” he says. “Well, I.” Another drop of mud runs down his nose. “Maybe just a… just a quick one.”

“There you go!” Sabine says, gesturing him in. “Come right on up, you know where the bathroom is. Oh, c’mon, I have a muddy daughter already, you can’t ruin my floor much more. Go on ahead.”

She waits until he’s well out of sight before turning her attention back to Catherine. The girl smiles at her. “A bicycle tire?” she asks with amusement.

“Olga ripped it right out of the bicycle!” Jackson pipes in, cheery like a morning bird, shooting the brightest smile at the girl in question. “Just right out of it!”

Olga turns red as a cherry. “It was, ah, old,” she says, shyly, fumbling around the unfamiliar words. “Brown already.”

“Rusty?” Maman asks, and she nods. “Was it your idea to rip the tire off?”

Olga hesitates, but her eyes betray her, the way they skittle off to the side. Jackson beams. “I was trying to get the handle,” she says.

“The tire was easier,” Olga says, then immediately seems embarrassed by it. She does go an even deeper red when Maman runs a hand through her hair, laughing a deep belly laugh.

“I’m sure it was! Impressive, anyway. But you did not cut yourself, I hope? Let me see.”

She kneels down to examine the girls’ hands, making sure they’re still unscathed. Old calluses and cuts she sees, but nothing new to worry about. Still. “Keep away from rusty things from now on, yes, dear heart? We don’t want any tetanus shots, do we?”

Olga’s face is puzzled. “Shots?” she repeats.

“Needles,” Little Jackson says. “Big, ol’ nasty needles.”

Olga doesn’t shudder, the way most kids would, but her face does turn very serious. “No,” she says. “No needles.”

“The same goes to you, Janey!” Zora calls out, outstretching her arms. “Come over here so I can see those hands. Girl! Were you runnin’ or rollin’ in the mud?”

“I run some,” Little Jackson says, rushing into her mother’s arms. “Then I rolled. I  _nearly_ caught them, Mama!”

“Don’t catch them with a rusty tire next time, al’right, Janey-love?” Zora says, pulling the girl into her lap mud and all. Maman inspects Catharine’s hands as well, cleaning the tip of her nose to kiss it.

“We’re gonna have to scrub you, won’t we?” she says, with a wink. “You’ll give Pedro white hair one of these days, you know. What shall we ever do about it?”

Catharine shrugs. “They were making fun of Oscar,” she says again, as if that explains everything. It does, if Sabine is to be perfectly honest.

“I told her she didn’t need to chase them,” Oscar says, fretting, hovering behind Catharine. “Oh, Catharine, your  _hair.”_

“It’ll grow again,” Catharine says, hardly bothered. “Oscar! It will. I don’t care.”

“But it was so pretty,” Oscar mourns.

“It isn’t pretty anymore?” Catharine says, and her smile is a step away from laughter at Oscar’s immediate blubber of indignation.

In the kitchen, Zora gets up with Little Jackson at her arm. “All right, I better get Janey home before the mud hardens and she turns into a cocoon”. Walking up to the door, she turns to Olga. “Why don’t I drop you home, sugar? Your mum won’t be mad at you if you’re with me.”

Olga seems half shy and half relieved, but she reaches for Zora’s hand all of the same. Doesn’t even think about it. She has keen nose that one; she can smell love from a hundred miles away. Her first day in the neighborhood and she’d floated right up to Oscar and Catharine, before Little Jackson even introduced her. Just like that.

“Bye, Miss Sabine,” she says, waving at her even though Maman told her a hundred times there was no need for Miss this or Miss that. “Bye, Oscar, bye, Cat!”

“We’re gonna play again tomorrow, yes?” Oscar says, eagerly, looking at Olga for confirmation. “To finish the tournament?”

A glint of excitement crosses Olga’s eyes. “Yes! Yes, tomorrow!” She smiles wide at Oscar. “I’ll, ah, I’ll…” She looks up at Little Jackson for help.

“Kick your butt!” Jackson provides. Olga nods eagerly.

“Kick your butt!” she agrees.

Maman and Zora take each their share of children before they start bickering over who’s gonna kick whose butt. Sabine leads Catharine and Oscar upstairs and scrubs them clean, double-checking for any new cuts. Puts them in their pajamas. Tells them once again, no more rusty tires.

Pedro knocks politely on the door when she’s picking up the scissors to try and fix Catharine’s hair. He’s wearing Bruno’s clothes, which hang too loose on him. Still, he looks a lot less stressed. “Thank you for the shower, Maman,” he says, heartfelt. “Cat didn’t hurt herself, did she?”

“I told you I had it under control!” Catharine says, wedging herself under Sabine’s arm. Her hair looks remarkably like Oscar’s had when she came to the house. “You didn’t have to haul me back!”

“Rusty tires are not for kids,” he tells her sternly, smudging her nose in. “Why don’t you just call me next time? I’ll sock those kids over their heads for you. I’m bigger.”

“I’m scarier,” Catharine says.

“Can’t argue with that,” Pedro says. Then he lunges for Catharine and grabs her under the arms and blows raspberries in her stomach. She screams and laughs and squirms until Pedro’s gotta hold her legs to keep her from falling over his shoulder. “You’re an absolute brat. I like Oscar much better.”

“I like her better, too,” Catharine says to his back, and smiles when Pedro puts her down right into Oscar’s arms. The girl fumbles and catches her around the waist, red all the way to her fluffy hair. Cat kisses her cheek. “She’s prettier than you.”

“Can’t argue that either,” Pedro says. He ruffles Oscar’s hair. “I’ll be off then. Can you stay out of trouble for another twenty four hours?”

 _“I_  can,” Oscar says, and Catharine makes a little ha-hrumph sound.

Pedro’s off then, muddy clothes in a plastic bag, and Maman goes back to fixing Catharine’s hair. There’s no way around it. She cuts it around the girl’s shoulders, but Cat doesn’t seem to mind it terribly much. That dealt with, they all settle down for dinner.

Next day, Pedro shows up with Olga in the crook of one arm, pressing a bag of ice to the girl’s forehead. “They were doing piggyback ride races,” he tells Maman, with a deep, deep sigh. “One day, Maman. One day. Is that asking too much?”

Chuckling despite herself, she beckons him in.


End file.
